


Reunion

by LittleDesertFlower



Category: Memorias de Idhún | The Idhún's Memories - Laura Gallego
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, La Resistencia, M/M, Reunions, all I write is angsty and at this point I'm not even sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 21:56:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16606166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDesertFlower/pseuds/LittleDesertFlower
Summary: First conversation Shail and Alsan have when they are finally reunited after two years.





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliTheOrder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliTheOrder/gifts), [ShinyWings1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyWings1/gifts).



And now a shek is in their midst. A shek, a dragon, a unicorn. The three creatures Idhún’s fate depends on. And the two humans who have been fighting this war for longer than they know, bone-tired and sleep-added, look each other in the eye and acknowledge the changes.

The heartbreaking changes two years have sculpted into their lives, chiseling away everything good, everything beautiful, that in their youths they had hoped to preserve forever.

The shek is here and all Alsan sees is an enemy to kill. Shail sees Victoria, the child of his heart and soul, whose love for the shek has united two words, and despite what he knows Kirtash has and is capable of, he doesn’t harbor hate in his heart. He can’t, he’s too tired to focus on anything that isn’t the man in front of him, just as worn, just as old as he is.

A wizard and a knight, and what life had made out of them.

“Alsan…” Shail says. “Leave him be.”

The last thing he wants is to watch this man walk away, wielding his sword at the shek. The last thing he wants—period—is to watch this man walk away.

“He killed you,” Alsan says. He fights, that much hasn’t changed, and Shail is sure nothing in the world would be strong enough to mellow Alsan’s stubbornness to keep going. Not even after looking into those yellow eyes, he doesn’t think there is such a force in this universe. “He took you away from me. Two years, Shail. For two years I mourned your death, and I became a monster, and he’s ruined all of our lives, like his father did before him. How, Shail, how could I ever not be angry? How can I let him _go_?”

Shail wants to explain it, word it better so he doesn’t feel this terrible guilt corroding him. _He saved me, Alsan. He saved my life, but he cursed yours. And I didn’t know._

Kirtash has killed in cold blood, he was their enemy for three years, and then because of him their lives have taken opposing paths into darkness. Alsan is a changed man because of the shek, he bears new scars on his skin, his hair is gray and his eyes are old. And if it was up to Shail, in a perfect world where there was no war, he would do unspeakable things to Kirtash as punishment, in the name of justice. But he plays an important part in the life of the second being in the universe Shail was ready to die for.

_Who do I choose to be angry with? Alsan or Victoria?_

But it makes no matter. In the end, Shail doesn’t have to say anything.

“He took you away from me,” Alsan repeats. “By what right did he take you away from me?”

“I’m here now. I’ll always be here.”

Alsan frowns. “It’s not the first time you promise anyone that.”

“I mean it this time.” Shail bites his lip. “I thought you dead, too. Two kids against a legion of szish and a shek as their leader… I thought I’d never see you again, Alsan.”

And Alsan just exhales and lets Shail continue.

“I thought … all we’d stood for, all we’d done… All we’d—” He chooses the next word carefully, because it once took him a long time to see it as that word conveys. “— _learned_... was dying, and I couldn’t do anything.”

Alsan sees tears in Shail’s eyes and can’t say what he has in mind. He can’t say that it’s been two years of misery and agony, each day harder than the last. Each day lonelier than the last. Earth had felt like a graveyard after he’d learned Shail was allegedly dead.

“I couldn’t, either. I left them alone, too. I had to.” He growls: “I would’ve murdered the Resistance from within.”

Shail looks at him, at the man that he hardly recognizes. He’d spent years learning how Alsan moved and how he thought and what mattered to him beneath his armor, and only now he is realizing how much of that has been lost to better years. He doesn’t have an heir to the throne in front of him, he is standing with a man of hardship and loss. 

“What happened to you?” Shail asks softly, puts a hand on Alsan’s strong shoulder. He used to rub his face against that shoulder, when they were both alone at the library, reading on spells and history that wouldn’t get them out of Limbhad but would, at least, remind them of home until they had become each other’s _home._

Slowly, he raises that hand until he is cupping Alsan’s face with it. And he immediately knows at touch. Dark magic that pours out of Alsan’s body like blood oozes out of veins and arteries alike. The mark of a failed necromancy spell. A scar without an open wound.

“Elrion,” Alsan only says for all explanation.

Shail knows, because Shail always knows, but Alsan still wants to explain. He’s been reunited with his lover—the heart of his heart, the mind that kept him sane when they were both away from their home planet, alone and pressured to do their duty well and watch innocents die when they failed to—and yet the only thing Alsan can do is give Shail the truth, the absolute truth. In reality, though, Alsan is just giving him a way out. The necessary information to opt out of this, two years later.

“D’you remember all those stories you used to read about werewolves and the moon?” Alsan mutters.

Shail just nods. He knows, he knew the second he saw Alsan again. There are things inside him that have not changed and never will, there are feelings that have only grown stronger in his solitude—but there is also the mark of darkness in him. And that is what Alsan is offering to him now, and with it a chance to run away before it’s too late.

Still, Shail doesn’t move away from him. This is the man he loves; that much hasn’t changed either.

“That’s who I am now,” Alsan says. “A slave of the moon.”

Shail doesn’t move away. Shail stays. He was always, after all, fascinated by werewolves. There is a certain beauty, he thinks, in a creature bound to the moon, regardless of what it is that binds him.

Even so, Shail knows that there are stronger bounds, stronger bonds.

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet has been on the works for some time now, and I decided to finish it in honor of the best writers in this fandom, [ AliTheOrder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliTheOrder/pseuds/AliTheOrder) and [ ShinyWings1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyWings1/pseuds/ShinyWings1), and their beautiful beautiful [fic](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1183088)
> 
> You have opened The Door for me again, thank you <3


End file.
